Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Moore.
Hi Nick, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
When I first started working in Austin, I really enjoyed going to the different taco stands across the city. Many of them served this excellent green sauce that I had not had before growing up in Dallas. I became obsessed with this sauce and ended up eating it about 4 to 5 times a week for years. I couldn’t understand why I could not buy the sauce at H-E-B or at every gas station in town it seemed like the greatest thing and it should be around as much as ketchup or mustard. I decided to teach myself how to make this delicious green creamy spicy sauce and after about five years of trial and error I came up with a recipe I’m very proud of. That recipe is what we now sell as our creamy jalapeño. Along the way, I got an idea to sell something sweet as well to go along with the savory of the creamy Jalapeno. That idea launched our pineapple honey habanero and our mango tango which is phenomenal on pretty much every type of meat. Using only local and fresh ingredients is incredibly important to me we use no preservatives in our salsa must be refrigerated. I hate the idea of shoving acidified and chemically preserved foods into my body, wrecking the natural ph and causing heartburn and all sorts of health problems. When I walk through the grocery store and see rows and rows filled of salsa that is shelf stable for about 10 years it drives me nuts. That’s not real food and I believe you can taste the difference. It’s our mission to share our Salsa and fresh local hill country ingredients with the people of Central Texas. They deserve better than what is in the grocery store right now and at Moore Goods, we are working to make sure everyone in the hill country has access to fresh local real salsa made with ingredients they can pronounce and sources from where they live. We do not see our products as commodities to be chemically altered to squeeze out every bit of profit possible by extending the shelf life and lowering costs by any means necessary. We see our salsa as a way to share a hill country experience with friends and family and make a delicious meal even more memorable.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I tried to start this business before Covid and was having trouble finding a commercial kitchen. I had originally found a small kitchen that a local business owner was willing to let me lease but a larger restaurant owner leased out the restaurant next door and long story short he muscled me out of the small kitchen so he could use it for drive thru purposes. Luckily, we found a co-op commercial kitchen here in San Marcos and it’s been great so far.
Because we refuse to ruin our recipe/ flavor with preservatives or lower the ph of our salsa to make it shelf stable, it’s been difficult because we are constantly making fresh new batches which means that every minute I am not working my day job as an appraiser I am in the kitchen making salsa/ doing marketing/ doing tasting events on the weekends/ or just making lists of things to do. I always tell people that if I wanted to make a bunch of money, this would not be the business I would choose because it’s so difficult. My girlfriend has been awesome through this whole process, she helps me cook every weekend about 12 (4 each day) hours every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. We rent kitchen time during the night (off hours) to keep the cost down for our customers.
My sister helps with the social media and marketing aspect and that’s been a huge help. We are a tiny company trying to get our name out there so marketing is really important. She has a marketing background so having her expertise definitely helps in a huge way. One of my best and oldest friends Josh is our head of customer relations and aside from his role in developing new customers and keeping current customers happy his number one job is to keep us all motivated, and he has been great at that.
Really it all just comes down to the follow-through. I think the only reason we have come as far as we have ( we are still brand new, we have a lot further to go) is just being able to follow through with things. It’s one thing to say you want to start a company and it’s a whole other thing to put your money, time and energy on the line to make it happen.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I own a small salsa company called Moore Goods San Marcos LLC.
I also have a full-time job as an appraiser.
What does success mean to you?
Being able to look back at all you’ve done and be proud of the accomplishments you made and know that you did the best you could and didn’t take any shortcuts.
Pace Picante is probably one of the most recognizable Salsa brands in our country. It’s huge and that’s what my family ate growing up. That would be crazy if we became as big as them but that is not my goal. I don’t think you can stay what we are and what we want to represent when you get that big. Success for Moore Goods it not about becoming the biggest salsa brand ever, but instead changing the way people view salsa and food in general. Salsa shouldn’t be something stuffed in a jar pumped with chemicals to hopefully turn a profit someday on a shelf. It should be fresh, it should be made with local ingredients and it should be delicious. We like to call our products’ salsa elevated, we would like people to buy our salsa as a way to make their meals a little more special. Maybe someone tagged us in an Instagram post of a beautiful meal they cooked for their family, that would be a success for us.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.MooreGoodsSMTX.com
- Instagram: Www.Instagram.com/moore_goods_San_Marcos
- Facebook: Www.Facebook.com/moore_goods_san_marcos
